Manner Harmony in Farsi-Speaking Children with Typical and Protracted Phonological Development

So far, there has been a lack of research on the manner harmony process in children who learn Persian, both in children with typical phonological development and those with functional phonological disorder. Therefore, manner harmony in these groups of children is considered in the present study. To this aim, manner harmony patterns are examined in children with typical and protracted phonological development.Data collection is performed using a Picture-Naming task, which contains 132 pictures from different items designed to elicit the production of 132 different words. Examining the data indicated a large number of manner harmony errors by children with both typical and protracted phonological development. In the investigated error patterns, plosive harmony and nasal harmony were detected in both groups, while fricative harmony was observed in children with typical phonological development. Analyzing the results using “Articulatory ease” and “Perceptual cues” frameworks confirmed that articulatory limitations are the only stimulants that trigger manner harmony in children with protracted phonological development. On the other hand, perceptual factors in children with typical phonological development may also trigger the manner harmony when articulatory limitations are lessened or removed. The findings of this study also demonstrated some differences with similar studies on children with typical phonological development who speak other languages.